


Dathomir

by heliocentrics



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Alternate Universe - Dathomir, Dathomir, F/M, Nightsister Rey, Nightsisters (Star Wars), Zabrak, Zabrak Kylo, same universe different worlds
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-30
Updated: 2018-10-02
Packaged: 2019-07-17 12:32:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16095749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heliocentrics/pseuds/heliocentrics





	1. Dawn

The sun paints the world red.

Rey sits at the mouth of the cave, honing her knives. Technically, she’s on sentry, but enough of her sisters pepper the branches of the spindly trees decorating the entrance of the lair that she’s not concerned with being caught unaware. Instead she focuses her energy on the dagger in front of her—dull, silver metal, with a streak of violet, glowing bright, running through its center. Carefully, quietly, she taps into her own magick, impressing her energy into the electricity humming inside of the blade.

Something breaks her from her reverie. A presence, at the edges of her consciousness.

She’s being summoned.

With a sigh, she stands, sheathing her knives in the holsters at her wrists, and turns around to enter the her home.

Inside, behind crumbling rocks and overturned stones, the cave expands from a small entrance into a lair. The ceiling reaches beyond Rey’s vision, going up and up until it’s obscured from view by stalagmites and fog. _An entire city, hiding underneath the mountain._ Rivers of bright blue water flow between outcroppings of sanded-down stone. Around huts and campfires, her sisters gather, meditating on the power of the planet, fixing weapons or armor, and talking amongst one another. As she passes, a few meet her eyes with a smile. The sight makes her warm inside.

This is her home. 

That presence, tickling the outskirts of her conscious mind, brings her away from her sisters, and towards the center of the lair. A structure, standing singular from the rest, denotes her destination. 

A single Nightsister, armored and equipped with a shortsword, bows as Rey approaches the structure. “Sister Rey. Our Mother has been expecting you.”

“So she has,” Rey replies, mirroring the bow of her sister. “May I enter?”

“Of course.”

Rey nods, stepping forward, pushing aside the cloth curtain that serves as a door for the building. “Thank you, Talzin.”

Mother Leia, for the leader of a witch clan, is unassuming—small, even. Her cabin reflects that; a cabinet of vials and necessary tools for witchcraft line one wall, and a door leading to her personal chambers branches off of another. She sits atop a stone block against the far wall, eyes closed and legs crossed, atop a block of stone, the fingers of her left hand pressed against the dirt floor. When she senses Rey enter, however, she pauses her meditation, lifting her eyes to meet Rey’s with a warm smile. “My daughter. Come to me.”

Rey obeys, sitting cross-legged across from the matriarch.

Though Rey is not related to Mother Leia by blood, she feels the same kinship as a daughter might with her blood mother. Found on the far side of Dathomir, abandoned by a runaway Nightsister and her Zabrak mate and succumbed to their own battle injuries, Rey had been taken in with the rest of the witches, taught in the ways of magick and that special brand of the Force only she and her sisters could wield. The coven had become her family, with Leia as her mother.

“I remember the day I first laid eyes on you,” Leia says. “I felt that power lying dormant inside of you. And to see it blossom… it has been a blessing.”

Rey bows her head out of respect, parroting the sentiment back to her. “The blessing has been mine, Mother, to serve our coven.”

“And the planet blesses you in return,” Leia intones, the usual response to professions of sisterhood. “I have a task for you.”

Rey raises her head, locking eyes with Leia. “A task, Mother?”

“A mission, of sorts.” She fusses with the hem of her cloak as she speaks; the entire exchange suddenly feels very pedestrian, and Rey huffs out a short exhale. “Upon hours of meditation I have begun to sense a dark presence on the far side of Dathomir. It has sapped the power— the darkness— from our home. Initially I thought it benign, nothing to bother myself with, but it has only been growing.”

“A presence?” 

Leia reaches forward to grab her hand. “Let me show you.”

Rey is blinded, then, by Leia’s own vision: the Force, surrounding them like a maelstrom out of nowhere. Her senses are overtaken by what Leia shows her—

It’s like a _cloud_ , a black cloud, persisting over the far side of the planet, just as she had described. It churns and moves, like the eye of a storm drawn to a single location. Even in that instant that Rey has been shown, she can feel the pain and wrath and suffering permeating the presence, denoting everything it is and has been and will become—

And then it’s gone, and Leia has pulled her hand back, the vision dissipating from Rey’s mind.

Rey lets the silence hang for a moment before replying. “...What would you have me do?”

Leia takes a long sigh, letting her eyes flutter shut. Her pause lasts so long that Rey is starting to think she’s lapsed back into meditation, dismissing her, but she finally speaks. “I trust your judgment. Handle it how you must. But when you return, I want that presence gone.”

Rey nods diligently. “I will carry out your bidding, Mother.”

“There is something else,” Leia mentions, almost as an aside, as Rey goes to stand. “This task is dangerous, and I would be remiss to lose you on a mission such as this.”

Rey barely has a moment to be insulted. “Mother, I assure you-”

“I have faith in your ability to carry out this mission, Rey, but I still want you to have help. And it is past time that we have reconvened with the Nightbrothers.”

“The _Nightbrothers_? Mother, I understand your hesitation in sending me alone, but if you want me accompanied, let me take a Sister. Let me take Kaydel; you’ve seen her in training, she’s-”

“Rey.” Leia’s voice has turned to steel, her eyes narrowed. “My decision on this is final. You will go to the Nightbrother village and select a male to accompany you on this mission.”

When Rey is frustrated, she cries. She’s never understood why she does this, and has tried to train herself out of it for years, but no matter what, when her exasperation is at is peak, she can’t hold back tears. It’s a quality she hates more than anything in herself. She can’t remember ever crying out of true sadness, or anger, or any other emotion but that desperate, fruitless escape from imminent defeat.

So when Leia sternly interrupts her, and she feels like she’s ten again, well on her way to a lecture from the only mother she’s ever known, she feels that familiar prick in the back of her eyes, and the telltale blurring of her vision. She bows her head to hide her face from view, cheeks pink with embarrassment. 

“Yes, Mother,” she says, her voice cracking.

Rey feels Leia’s fingers curl around her chin, forcing her face upwards. Her eyes are soft again, all stern authority gone from her gaze. When she speaks, that steel is gone, too.

“Don’t be ashamed of your emotions, Daughter. Let them fuel you.” When her black lips curl up in a smile, Rey returns the look, wiping away the wetness on her pale cheeks.

“I’m not sending you with a Nightbrother because I think you’re incapable. I’m sending you with one because you’re too capable to lose.”

It sends a jolt through her, the idea of being valued. She’s been with the coven for as long as she can remember, and validation is not a new concept, nor a new feeling to her, but it still takes her aback every time. When the only memory of your past is abandonment, affirmation is never expected; it’s always a surprise.

Still, a question is unanswered. “But why the Nightbrothers?”

Leia pauses, her eyes fluttering shut and a sigh emanating through her before she speaks again. “You know I value you, that your sisters value you. The coven is strong because of you; Dathomir is strong because of you.” Leia swallows, looks away for just an instant. “And I will not be here forever.”

Rey starts, brow furrowing together. “What are you saying?”

“I have been Mother of the Nightsisters since before you were alive. My time here is waning. And when I’m gone, I want to know that the coven is in good hands. Strong, capable hands.”

Leia’s words, her meaning, clicks into place then. “You want me to become the next Mother.”

The slight bow of Leia’s head is the only confirmation she needs. “And a good Mother is not just master of the Nightsisters, my Daughter. She is master of the Nightbrothers as well.”

Rey’s blood pounds in her ears. _Mother of the Nightsisters_. It’s a possibility she’s never considered. She’d always known she was strong, powerful even among her Sisters, but never enough to compare to Leia. 

And the Nightbrothers… 

“I don’t know what to say—”

“Say nothing,” Leia finishes, placing a pale hand over one of Rey’s own. “Just consider it. You don’t have to become Mother tomorrow— any number of things can happen between this day and my last. But now you know why you must go to the Nightbrothers.”

Rey lets her eyes shut, taking a deep breath, centering herself. And when she opens them, she wills away any reservation she has about those Zabrak brutes, as if clearing them from her mind will wipe them from existence. “I do.”

Leia must still sense her reservations, because she doesn’t seem keen on dropping the matter. “This first meeting can be a first stepping stone towards long-lasting cooperation between master and servant, Rey.” 

Rey tries to quash this with a shake of her head. “No. I understand.” 

Leia nods, apparently satisfied. “Good. You will go to the Nightbrothers tomorrow, and select a warrior to accompany you to the far reaches of the planet.”

***

“Come with me.”

“To the village? Do you have a death wish?” Rose tips her head back and laughs, resting her head back against the pale bark of the leafless tree they sit under. “You’d better go alone.”

Rey has to hold back a groan at that. “I’d rather slaughter them all with you than feign pleasantries there alone.” She knows Rose’s nature, though. She’d sooner kill a Zabrak than talk to him.

Rose hums her assent. “I still can’t believe Mother Leia’s making you take one of _them_ with you. You’re more than capable of taking care of business on your own.”

Rey shrugs. “It’s not an insult to my skill; Mother Leia herself said she has faith in me.” 

“Then why bring one of those brutes with you?”

It’s not that Rey doesn’t _want_ to explain it to her, but the whole thing just seems… sensitive _._ Like she shouldn’t be telling her sisters that Leia is grooming her to lead the coven once she’s gone.

“She’d rather not lose me on something as minor as this,” Rey says by way of explanation, waving her hand as if to dismiss the conversation. “It doesn’t matter. I wish I could take you with me, but I can’t.”

“Then I wish you well, Sister,” Rose says, and Rey knows she means it.

***

Her landspeeder skirts across the swampland on the far side of the planet.

Their leader greets her at the outskirts of the village, arms crossed and brow furrowed. “Sister Rey. We were not expecting your arrival.”

“I’m not here for breeding purposes, Poe.” She dismisses his train of thought with a wave of her hand and removes her cowl with the other. When Nightsisters approach the village alone, they’re usually looking for a mate to breed with. She’s never heard of a Sister spending more than a night with a Zabrak warrior; once she’s mated, she returns to the coven and performs a Force ritual to improve her fertility. The only instance she knows of Nightsister and Nightbrother _bonding_ —a taboo word amongst the coven—paints the story of her birth. Apparently, a Nightsister from Leia’s generation eloped with a Nightbrother after mating with him, and the two had lived in the wastelands by the Red Hills, until their lust had turned to anger, and the pair had killed one another, leaving an infant Rey to be found and taken in by the coven.

The leader leans back on his haunches, taking her in as she walks closer. “Mother Leia would have told me if our village inspection had been moved up.” His eyes pierce her. “Or conducted by one person.”

“I’m here to fetch a Nightbrother to accompany me for a mission. By order of Mother Leia.”

Poe starts. “A mission? And you need a Nightbrother?”

She’s growing tired of explaining the entire situation to everyone she brings it up to, so a shrug serves as her explanation.

“Gather your village.” Rey demands in a clipped tone. “I want this done as quickly as possible.”

Poe gestures to a Zabrak hovering by a structure just feet away—this one with bright yellow markings—and the male skitters away. “I believe I may have someone in mind for you, Sister Rey,” he says as they begin walking towards the village center.

“Oh?” Rey walks in tandem with the leader, watching as horned males emerge from dilapidated huts or training fields that comprise the tribe’s headquarters. “Must be someone you’re willing to get rid of.”

Poe’s been found out, and his chuckle is a short, nervous one. “I promise you, he’s strong, and more than capable for your task.”

Rey is puzzled. “Then why be rid of him?”

Poe grimaces as he formulates his next words, tapping his scythe across the packed dirt ground as he walks. “He’s trouble.”

“I thought all you warriors were trouble,” Rey says, amusement coloring her voice.

“Some more than others,” is all Poe says in response, her humor lost on him, his eyes far away.

Her gaze lingers on him before she turns away, flexing her wrists and feeling the sharp points of her sheathed knives dig into the heels of her palms. “It doesn’t matter. I’ll be selecting the Nightbrother.”

“Fair. It’s your mission.”

Rey respects Poe, out of all the Nightbrothers. She’s met him a handful of times, when accompanying Leia for visits or leading village inspections, and she’s never had a problem with him. For a Zabrak, that’s an accomplishment. She’s even considered mating with him once or twice; he’s a little short for her tastes, but between a tousled arrangement of soft black curls intermingling with short, cream-colored horns, and modest, lean muscles lying dormant underneath gray skin with markings the color of sand, she thinks she could get used to him.

In the clearing at the village’s center, the Brothers have begun gathering in rows and columns. Most of them look bored, albeit nervous. Rey begins her survey without preamble, pacing between the columns of men before her. Some are too short, some too gangly, but others— some with visible muscle, or bared teeth, or who stare right back when her eyes graze them— she can tell, will do. She taps them on the shoulder to select them, and at Poe’s insistence, they separate from the group to await further instruction.

She’s just finished examining a particularly short and unexciting Zabrak— almost as short as she is, with bland markings the color of pale sun— when she sees him. 

He towers above her— above most of the tribe— and when she turns her attention to him, he spends an inordinate amount of time shifting his gaze to her. His eyes are a striking dark hazel, she notes, as opposed to the traditional fiery color most Zabraks possess. Whereas most of the Nightbrothers are shaded with markings in tones of yellows and oranges, he has skin black as night, with markings of a crimson so dark she could mistake it for blood. Sharp, elongated horns poke out from a thick head of jet black hair, which cascades past his brow and is nearly brushing his neck. 

In almost every way, he is fundamentally different from the rest of his clan. 

And Rey knows instinctively that _this_ is the trouble Poe was describing.

With a slow, delicate hand, Rey reaches up— she has to extend her elbow to reach his height— and firmly grazes the tip of his shoulder with two long, pale fingers.

When they touch, it’s as if Rey’s been prodded with an electro-staff— a blaze of light tears through her mind as his touch electrifies her, trickling down through every nerve in her body. It’s striking, and paralyzing, and invigorating, all at once. Rey concentrates on stilling her body, not giving him the satisfaction of knowing he’s had an effect on her.

He must have felt it though, because she spots just the slightest jolt from him before she pulls her hand away. 

“These will do. The rest can go.” She’s still surveying him—broad shoulders, thick arms corded with muscle, the planes of his abdominals, the color of his eyes—as she calls out the command to Poe. It’s as if that innate Nightbrother subservience has kicked in then, because he tears his gaze away and marches across the clearing to where the rest of his Brothers stand, selected.

“I’ll be battling with each of you,” she says, with the practiced air of an instructor lecturing her students. “To first blood.”

When she flicks out her knives, palming the handles, she sees hints of fear flash across more than a few faces.

A headstrong young male— younger than she is, Rey estimates— steps forward, catching the staff that the yellow-skinned male from before tosses him. 

_Such fire, such_ indignance _in your heart. It’s a shame you’ll have to die._

Rey twirls her knives in her hands, leaning down into a defensive stance. Just before she can feel him begin his attack position, she calls upon the Force, and nudges just a hint of energy into each hilt. A vein of special Dathomirian glass, designed to host and conduct Force power, runs through the center of each weapon. Once she’s infused them with enough energy, they glow an electric purple, hissing and crackling against the cold metal of the sparring knife.

Then he charges at her, staff hand outstretched, electricity activated, with a war scream in his lungs. She quickly deflects a sloppy blow to her skull with a quick duck, and retaliates with a restrained kick to his ribs. The movement is over as soon as it begins, but he doesn’t wait, barely pauses as he raises the staff and aims a hit for her chest. She catches his arm in the middle of his move, delivering a swift knee to his lower stomach while she has him there, and releases him to heave and splutter on the ground.

 _Two moves, two misses_. She whirls the knife in her right hand around her knuckles, pacing impatiently while the Zabrak gathers his bearings. 

Once she hears him plant one foot into the dirt, and then the next, she spins back around to face him, knives at the ready. He seems reluctant, fatigued, but still rushes towards her for a third time, staff extended past his shoulder, power emanating through his posture, and he’ll do it, he’ll really do it, he’ll land a blow, break his chains—

Rey buries her knife in his chest with ease, and moments later, his Force signature flickers out.

The blade comes out as cleanly as it had gone in, and Rey barely pauses to clean the weapon with a strip of gauzy fabric hanging loosely from her hips. “Who’s next?”

She downs three more of them with ease, only inflicting a wound to end the battle when she’s growing bored or sympathetic. The fourth doesn’t go down without a fight, landing a sloppy blow to her knee that earns hushed gasps from her onlookers. That’s when she decides to kill him, too, slashing her blade across his throat the next time he attacks her. After that, the fifth attempts a few benign charges and yields before she can put her knife on him.

The sixth and final challenger is the tallest Nightbrother.

He’s been watching from the sidelines without reaction, an almost apathetic look painting his features as he leans against his own electro-staff. Even when she had killed his brothers, he had little more than twitched, crossed his arms, and resumed his position. 

But now his Brothers are gone, dead or defeated.

He stands straight, grabbing his staff and activating it in the same fluid movement. Based on his sheer size, she expects him to move slowly, his skills reserved in his strength, and is already planning her first move based on that. But he’s surprisingly agile as he walks, quick on his feet, and Rey finds herself stumbling over her thought process, retracing the steps of how she thought this fight would go.

He runs a large hand through that hair, his thick fingers navigating the minefield of horns to brush his locks back with a practiced ease, before bending down, staff hanging limp in his arm. “Your move.”

His voice reverberates through the clearing, almost reminding Rey of the deep undertone that accompanies Leia’s voice, the power of the ichor she consumes and manipulates penetrating through her timbre.

Now she’s on the offensive. She threads her dagger through her fingers expertly, checking on his Force presence— and finding nothing.

 _Fine, then._ She’s been unnerved by this man for the last time.

She straightens, sheathes her knives at her wrists, and runs. 

He’s anticipating the move before she’s even made it, stepping to the side as her hands curl into fists, but she corrects quickly, catapulting into the air and landing a tight kick to his left shoulder.

It’s like kicking a wall, though; he seems unaffected, unmoving as she pushes her weight against him. When she somersaults to a land on the ground, she can feel him staring and pacing toward her. 

With an almost invisible flick of her wrists, she re-arms herself, hilts pressing against her palms, and pivots, bending low.

“Your move.” She spits his line back at him.

They aren’t far apart; he only has to take a few steps to be in attacking range, and then she’s blocking his staff, one blow after another. He tries her shoulder, her knees, her forearms, her ribs, even a sweep at her feet, but she jumps out of range at the last second, exacting her own defensive blow. Her knives serve as shields, often coming directly into contact with the rough metal of the staff. 

They spar for a moment, and for the first time since arriving at the village, Rey feels challenged, and _alive_ , that wonderful feeling burning through her lungs and into the heart of her chest. At one point he grazes her ribs with a spark from the electro-staff, singing away her clothing and leaving a nasty burn, but she can’t find the energy to feel angry with him, only the energy to keep the dance going, to fight back. She can feel pinpricks of sweat gathering on her forehead, and she can tell this is exerting him, too. That black mane of hair is beginning to plaster to his forehead, and perspiration collects on his neck and chest, running down him in rivulets, past skin of black and skin of red, like tainted blood.

Just as she’s getting into the swing of his fighting style, he apparently grows out of it, baring his teeth and pressing back for a dual-armed blow. She barely has a moment to process his move before he’s made it, and she lifts her blades to clash with the staff in a weak defense. He’s pressing down on her, and it takes all her energy to press back through her daggers, and not to collapse into the dirt. She snarls at him, nose scrunching as she steels herself, musters her strength to keep him at bay. The purple lightning of the electro-staff hisses and singes the flyaway hairs that have come loose from her buns during the fight, and she has to turn her face away to keep from getting shocked.

They’re at an impasse, she and him, equal energies matched against staff and dagger, strength and speed. She is all snarls and spits and furrowed brows, not bothering to hide her contempt with him, where he simply stares back, hazel eyes pinned to hers, as if he can read her mind, read the story she’s never known herself.

 _End this_. It’s the witch in her, the Nightsister, commanding her to finish the fight, remind the Zabrak brute of his subservience and restore her seniority. She keeps her eyes trained on his as she manipulates the Force around them, summoning it to her strength. Just before she loses that connection, she channels that inane frustration, and confusion, and anger, and then pushes. 

He stumbles, their weapons disconnecting, and that’s her opening. She flips a dagger towards him, takes the few steps forward she needs to be in range, and executes a clean slice down his bicep, digging deep enough to see him wince. Quickly, she sprints away, claiming her victory before he can retaliate.

Poe’s calling out to her, but she can’t hear the words, blood still pounding in her ears as she catches her breath. She wants to indulge in her kill, so she spins on a toe, wiping down her blade as she prepares a retort.

But the Zabrak male, apparently scorned, has paid no notice to the gash on his arm, and has a laser focus on her. He strides forward, a focused wrath resounding in every step, and spins his staff forward, electricity crackling.

Poe is yelling behind her— she thinks she can hear him running into the ring as well— but it’s unnecessary, because she drops her knives, calls upon the Force, and flings her hand out to press him back.

He flies a good ten feet or so, electro-staff ripped from his hand, to land on his injured arm. She can hear whispers and winces from the remaining Nightbrothers float to her ears, but she pays them no mind, instead closing the distance between victor and vanquished.

He’s curled in on himself, groaning as he clutches his arm against his chest, when she finally approaches him. He steels himself and makes to roll forward, but Rey’s foot, planted firmly on the smooth muscle of his good arm, keeps him in place. He’s a giant compared to her, large even for a Zabrak, but in this moment, she stands heads above him, nose upturned as she peers down at him.

And he looks up at her.

She can see hints of anger peppering the edges of his gaze, wrath and fury simmering just below the surface, subsiding. When they lock eyes, though, it’s that same intense hazel, boring into her, filled with an emotion she cannot place. The glance lasts a moment, she thinks, nothing but his eyes as Dathomir turns and exists around them. As the galaxy and the universe exist, with them at the epicenter.

Rey hates it— hates the way this brute of a warrior disarms her at every turn. She balls her hands into fists, pressing the crescents of her nails into ghost-white skin, and injects her own gaze with pure malice. “Name.”

It takes a moment for him to respond to her demand as he emerges from their collective trance, his brow knitting together in pain, and confusion. “What?"

“Your name.”

That same intensity filters back into his eyes. “I would give it to you standing up.”

She kicks the inside of his bicep with the toe of her boot, and when he rolls over on his back, she presses her sole to the center of a firm pectoral. “You’ll give it to me on your back. You’ll give it to me _here._ ” 

He sighs, and her leg rises and falls with his breath. “Kylo Ren.”

At this meek, defeated admission of identity, she allows him some measure of decency, taking her foot off his chest. She lets their eye contact linger for a second longer before turning away from him. Around her, nothing has changed; the Zabraks sit, astonished at the exchange, while Poe only looks bemused. 

“He’ll be joining me.” 


	2. Day

“You shouldn’t have killed them.”

It’s the first thing he’s said to her since boarding the landspeeder and leaving the village behind, skirting past barren desert lands lit blood-red by a setting crimson sky. He keeps his head down as he says it, so when Rey turns to him, all she can see is his profile.

She scoffs. “I had to.”

“Was it not enough to mark us, pick one and be done with it?”

Ignoring his question, she leans down and slows the speeder to a stop, hopping down to hard-packed dirt and unhooking a bag of supplies from the back. “We’ll camp here for the night cycle,” she calls to the Zabrak she’s chosen— _Kylo Ren_ , she remembers.

They’re on the edges of a patch of stark forest, leafless trees winding past and around each other. Ahead of them is only desert, interrupted only by the occasional stone or outcropping of rock. The blood-red sun sets across a sky of transparent clouds and fog.

He stands by the speeder, silent and unmoving, while she sets up camp. “You’re supposed to be helping me,” she calls to him amongst a nest of supplies.

The sound of his footfalls, soft against cracked dirt, grow nearer and nearer, until she can see him rummaging through their supplies next to her. 

Rey sighs, leaning back from the nest of canvas she’s attempting to construct into a tent. “If you don’t fear for your life, you won’t fight for it.”

“What?”

She turns to Kylo, unpacking a set of powdered food next to a canister of water. “I had to kill your Brothers so the rest of you would fight like men. Fight with a fear for your life—the way you’d fight out here, if a rancor or something came lunging at you.”

Kylo pauses for a moment, holding another canister in his large hands. “That’s a terrible way to think. A terrible way to live.”

“Assume death is around every corner,” Rey intones a saying of Mother Leia’s, “and you always be prepared to defend your life.”

He stops, just for a moment, his face an impasse of expression, before continuing at his task. “When you’re a Nightbrother, death _is_ around every corner.” It’s just a murmur, but she feels his gaze on her as he says it, awaiting a response.

“I’m not going to argue with you,” Rey bites back, stabbing a tent pole through the cracked ground to drive home her point. “We don’t have to agree; we just have to work together. Becoming friends is not a requirement of carrying out a task of this nature.”

“What task, exactly?” Kylo asks, his voice returning to its normal baritone. “I never did figure that out.”

“There’s a dark presence on the far side of the planet Mother Leia wants us to investigate and tamp out. Start unpacking the kindling supplies, in that bag over there.” He obeys the order wordlessly as she continues. “I don’t know how bad it will be, hence your… assistance.”

She thinks she hears him chuckle mirthlessly, but it’s hard to tell over the sound of wood grating against wood. She glances over to witness his painstaking attempt to construct a fire. “Let me help you,” she says, leaving a haphazardly erected tent at the far side of their camp as she paces over.

Kylo stands up and away, leaving her to it as he watches with a wary eye. “Shows how much the Mother trusts you, sending you off with one of _my kind_.” His tone makes it sound like an aside, but the words he uses cut her to the bone. 

Channeling the frustration that builds at his words, she calls upon the Force and funnels it through her limbs, down to the tips of her fingers. When she snaps, a spark lights, and then grows into a quiet flame, burning just an inch away from her fingers. She can feel Kylo’s gaze on her sharpen, his curiosity piqued as she reaches for a bundle of kindling. When she grabs a branch, the fire on her fingers kisses the porous wood, setting it alight first to smolder, and then to burn.

She throws the branch in with the rest of the kindling, blowing on it, and soon their campfire is crackling, the kindling engulfed with quiet flame.

Rey stands and meets his gaze. “The Mother is sending you with me _because_ she trusts me. If you knew anything about the relationship between Nightsisters and Nightbrothers, you’d know that.”

She feels a quiet bout of indignance, tamped down, through Kylo’s Force signature, but he simply turns and starts unpacking foodstuffs from another bag.

Rey makes a dinner of veg-meat and polystarch for them quietly and without assistance, as Kylo tries and fails to put together the tent. She notices him favoring his left arm— the one she’d cut, back at the village— but says nothing.

As they eat, she finds the silence uncomfortable, and scrambles for something to say to him. He doesn’t seem in the mood for conversation, but even still... 

“Poe told me you were trouble.” 

“Did he?” Kylo does little but raise an eyebrow at that, taking another bite of veg-meat before continuing. “And what’s your assessment?”

She shrugs, silently noting the change in dynamic and filing it away to contemplate later. “I feel like there’s a story there.”

Kylo sets down his plate and picks up his ball of polystarch, picking at it. “Killed a relative outside of single combat,” he says, nonchalantly, as if it was the simplest thing in the galaxy. “He was the leader of the tribe at the time. They didn’t take too kindly to it.”

“Of course they didn’t. Anyone in the galaxy worth their salt wouldn’t take too kindly to it.” Rey retorts, with venom lacing her voice.

Kylo merely shrugs in response, leaning back as he picks apart his meal.

“Who was it?” She finally asks, her curiosity getting the better of her.

“My uncle.”

She starts. “Why? Why kill him?”

Kylo slides his gaze from his meal to her. “Even if I told you the truth, you wouldn’t believe me,” he mumbles. “They certainly didn’t.”

She knows she should just disengage, drop the subject and leave this monster alone, but she can’t bring herself to tamp down on her own curiosity. “Who’s they?”

“The tribe. My fellow Nightbrothers,” he says with a hint of sarcasm. “The Mother wasn’t too happy about it, either.”

Rey frowned. _I don’t remember Mother Leia ever being upset about the conduct of a Nightbrother._ Then again, she couldn’t remember Leia ever seeming upset about something that didn’t directly involve Rey.

“He tried to kill me first, by the way,” he says, returning to his food. “It was self-defense.”

She scoffs. “I’m sure it was.”

Her appetite is suddenly gone; she sullenly finishes the last of her veg-meat without much gumption and tosses the plate aside to clean tomorrow. “We should sleep.”

“What, that’s all you have to say?” Kylo calls across the campfire as she turns around. “Nothing about that bothers you?”

Rey whips back around. “Of course it bothers me.”

“How?” His stare is intense, those hazel eyes honing in on her, just as they had at the village. Impulsively, she wants to shrink under his gaze, but steels herself.

“The way I feel… It’ll come back to you. An eye for an eye. You’ll get what you deserve, soon enough.”

She lays down on her bedroll, her back to him, not waiting to see his reaction to that. She shuts her eyes and wills her body to sleep, keeping a hand around the knife resting under her pillow.

***

_Something’s not right._

Even in sleep, she feels an uneasiness in the Force that silently rouses her. She keeps her eyes shut, reaching for the throwing knife positioned under her pillow.

_They’re sneaking up on me._

That nervous, yet focused energy, radiating through the Force, is thick enough to taste. It sneaks closer, and closer, and just before it’s too late—

She strikes.

And her blade is caught in a hand of black and red.

She uses Kylo’s wince of pain—and apparent surprise—to her advantage, and turns to knee him in the gut. That cripples him, for an instant, and she twists him around to land on his back. He’s pinned to the ground by her weight, the maneuver landing her so that she’s straddling him just above his hips. Once she’s wrested her blade from his lacerated hand, she holds it to his throat.

“What do you think you’re doing?” is the only thing she can manage to spit out at him. 

On the ground, he’s holding his injured palm with his free hand, and he stops to suck in a hot breath in his teeth. “Beating you to the punch.”

She lets out a mirthless laugh. “Like you beat your uncle to the punch? Nice try.” She presses the blade just a touch deeper into his skin. “Explain yourself before I jump to conclusions.”

“You’ll kill me, won’t you?” His voice is just a breath, heaving in and out of his lungs, eking past her blade on his Adam’s apple. “That’s what you and all your sisters do. Beat us down, enslave us, rape us and then kill us when we’re no longer of use to you.” He’s angry now, any surprise and residual pain fading, and he forces the words out through his teeth. His hazel eyes are murderous, and Rey was sure he’d kill her if he could.

Her knife falters in her palm, for just a moment, before she doubles the hold on him. “I’m not going to kill you. Though I should.”

“Why should l have assumed any different?” He retorts, a scoff choking his words. “You butchered my brothers in forced combat, whisked me away from the village, and refuse to tell me where we’re going or why. If you’re not going to kill me, you’re certainly taking me to someone who will.”

She pulls the blade back then, her mind digesting the former part of his sentence. “I had to.”

“That’s what the Mother wants you to believe.”

Rey shakes her head. She’s not even looking at him now. “No... no. She trusts me. She’s—”

“Grooming you?” he interrupts, eyes narrowed. “Preparing you to head the coven after her? Surely you must know Leia better than that by now.”

 _Leia?_ “You know the Mother?” 

“She manipulates and maneuvers for a living. I would recognize a plot of hers anywhere.” Kylo lets his head fall back onto her pillow. “She convinces you to do her bidding with promise of reward and then leaves you to die, her trust dying with you.”

 _No. He’s lying to you; he’s getting into your head, like any Nightbrother would._ “How do you know her so well?”

“She’s my mother.”

Rey scoffs. “Yes. And-”

“She gave birth to me.” Kylo cuts her off, rolling his eyes.

Rey only lets herself be shaken by this admission for a moment. “Leia doesn’t have children. I would have known.”

“Would you?” He seems exasperated now. “You’re not listening. She only tells you what she wants you to know; what purpose would admission of an exiled son serve her?”

Rey unhooks herself from Kylo’s midsection, her knife clattering to the ground next to her. _No. It’s not true_. 

But it _was_ , if she let herself consider his words. There was no reason why Leia would tell her about a child she had, no reason she would tell her about anything she didn’t need to know. Even while she promised to groom her, make her the next Mother once she died— it was hard to believe now that anything Leia told her wasn’t for a tactical advantage.

She raises her head to the skyline, eyes scanning the horizon. It’s barely dawn, red fog wisping across the barren landscape as the bloodshot sun begins to rise. 

Those tears of frustration, brimming just below the surface, are threatening to break free again. How could she be so _stupid_ to believe that the Mother trusted her, wanted her to succeed her? 

“It’s not your fault, you know,” she hears Kylo say. “Trusting the Mother—”

“We should get going,” Rey interrupts him, picking up her knife and standing. “Start breaking down camp.” She won’t let this Zabrak see her cry, won’t let him see her weak.

“Rey.” Kylo’s voice is surprisingly soft, and she knows without turning around that he hasn’t moved, that his eyes have stayed on her. “We can talk about this.”

“I’d really rather just get going,” she snaps, turning around to tug on the corner of her bedroll. Kylo doesn’t move, of course, and his weight on the fabric pins it in place. “Could you please get up and help me?”

“I know Leia; I know what she’s like.” He gets to his feet, slowly. “I know how you feel right now.”

“You have no idea how I feel,” she mutters, wrapping her bedroll up and walking over to their speeder to put it away.

Kylo, to his credit, stays quiet, packing up his own bedroll on the other side of camp. 

The next night, when they set up camp, Kylo makes them both dinner without being told, leaving Rey to sit by the tents and rest. She steals a glance at him as he works, and the look of quiet concentration on his face as he mixes polystarch with water almost shocks her. It’s not what she’d come to expect from the Zabrak brute she met at the village days ago; then again, she seems to have unlocked a side of Kylo she hadn’t seen before yesterday.

They eat in silence around the campfire, watching the crimson sun melt into the skyline, painting the sky a violent shade of darkening red. Rey can’t stop thinking about their conversation from this morning— she had spent most of the ride across the planet’s barren wasteland turning it over in her head, overly aware of Kylo’s presence next to her, his words an echo in her head. _That’s what the Mother wants you to believe. She only tells you what she wants you to know. It’s not your fault._

After a day of considering it, she still can’t decide if she should thank him or kill him. He’s telling the truth, that much she knows. It’s just a problem of deciding how open she’ll be about it.

Once they’ve finished eating, Rey takes their metal plates to clean while Kylo unpacks their bedrolls, setting up for the night. She kicks some loose dirt into the campfire, reducing the flames to mere embers as they settle in. Rey pillows her head on her arm, lying across her bedroll as Kylo sits down, resting an elbow lightly on his knee.

It’s calm as the fire wanes and the night waxes, despite the tension persisting between them. They seem to find a comfortable silence together, as Rey watches the flames die and Kylo peers across the landscape, staff lying next to him.

“I want to thank you,” she finally murmurs, breaking the silence. “For what you said this morning.” It’s quiet, but he must hear it, because he turns to her.

“You’re welcome,” he replies, his voice just as quiet. “I know it wouldn’t be easy, but… you needed to know.”

“I probably deserved that brush with death, too,” she says, glancing over at him. He shares a faint smile with her— the first she’s seen from him, she notices— as he grabs his canteen and takes a swig. “Just don’t try it again tonight.”

“If you don’t kill me, I think I can reciprocate.”

“I don’t plan on it.”

He smirks. “Good.”

Their banter is easy, but an underlying nervousness permeates the conversation— like a new Nightsister who’s just joined the coven, or Brothers visiting the lair. They’re still strangers, despite the events of the past few days. And friendly conversation with a Nightbrother was something Rey had never envisioned herself initiating. 

“Is your arm okay?” Rey finds herself saying, gesturing to the bandage. The stark white cloth stands out against his black and red skin, and she can see crimson blood marking the fabric in more than a few places.

Kylo grimaces, as if just mentioning the wound makes it hurt. “I’ve been trying to ignore it. It’s not bothering me much now.” He reaches over to readjust the bindings, and winces.

Her mind is made up then. “I can heal it for you… if you want.” She says it almost shyly, as if it’s an admission of emotion rather than an offer to help.

They both seem to interpret it as the former, though, because when she meets his gaze he seems open to her, almost vulnerable. Yet just when she’s about to revoke the offer, he says, “Okay.”

Before Rey can change her mind, she scrambles up from her spot at her bedroll to kneel next to him, tucking her feet underneath her. “Let me see it.”

Kylo lifts his bicep just an inch, and Rey has to hold his arm by the elbow to get a good look. He winces in response, but Rey just shushes him. “Don’t be such a baby,” she teases, peeling away the first layer of fabric.

He scoffs, a hint of mirth leaking into his voice. “Next time, I get to slice you open.”

“Hey, I thought we already talked about that,” she quips back, falling into a banter that comes easy to her now— _when did that happen?_ — before shushing him again as the last piece of bandage falls away.

The cut is still bleeding, and she can see infection starting to fester in some spots. The skin around it is puckered and bruised as hot blood rises to the surface to ooze from the wound. 

“Okay. This shouldn’t hurt too badly,” she says, watching his face carefully as she begins calling upon the Force. He’s examining the wound now with a bland curiosity, eyes flitting from the dark red blood to her own hands.

The pale skin of her fingers contrasts with the dark color of his own skin as Rey lightly places her hands on either side of his bicep, summoning the Force to her. Remembering the practices Leia had taught her (and banishing the name associated with them), she slowly begins to control the ebbs and flows of the Force around him, feeling him and her come alive with the power of it, if only for that moment.

She closes her eyes, the vision of Kylo and his wound and his skin and _him_ imprinted on her eyelids as she wills the Force through his body, up to his arm, through layers of dermis to knit the flesh together. It exerts her— a cut that big shouldn’t be healed like this— but she still manages it when the last inches of the wound finally close together, meeting in the center. She lets go of the Force, willing it out of him and her until the feeling of it lies dormant at the pit of her stomach.

Rey collapses against his arm, just for a moment, but it’s all she needs, that moment of reprieve. She can feel his hand encircling her wrist, pulling her back to him, and when she looks back up, their faces are just inches apart.

His gaze shoots up to her forehead, and the thumb of his left hand moves up to wipe away a sticky wetness. _His blood,_ she realizes, _his blood on my skin_. “Thank you,” he murmurs, eyes meeting hers again, “for that.”

She’s stunned into silence, watching his eyes as he watches hers, and she must have willed the Force back into her because she suddenly can’t control herself from reaching up and brushing the pad of her fingers against his bottom lip, stained black—

“We should probably get some sleep,” Kylo murmurs against her touch, leaning into it despite his words. “Getting dark soon.”

“Oh,” is the only response Rey can muster before forcing herself to pull away. “Okay.” She unfolds herself from his bedroll, pacing back to hers and lying down almost mechanically. Whereas every other night before this, he had felt too close to her, as if separate camps would have been too close, he now seems so far away. When she feels his gaze on her back, it’s no longer cold or calculating, but… warm, and comforting.

She’s still trying to solve the puzzle of how she feels about Kylo Ren when she falls asleep, the firelight dying next to her.


End file.
